SearchReSearch

A blog about search, search skills, teaching search, learning how to search, learning how to use Google effectively, learning how to do research. It also covers a good deal of sensemaking and information foraging.

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Hi Regular Readers! As mentioned, I'm in a fairly remote place in the South Pacific, where the weather is warm, the scuba diving is magnificent, and the wifi is extraordinarily flakey. Since it's so tough to do any online research for this week's SRS Challenge, I'm going to delay my reply until I get back next Wednesday.In the meantime, here are a few photos of things I've seen in the past couple of days. Have any ideas what these are, or where I am? (There are enough clues in these photos to narrow it down to a particular island group!) Search on!

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

... and sometimes it hides a story as well. In this week's Challenge, we have several locations that are covered in water, and hide their stories. In each case below, can you figure out what's going on? Why are each of these locations very interesting?

1. What's going on with all of these blue lines in the image below? You can find this oddly arranged water/earth combination at Google Maps link. There are several stories to discover here, but first--What is this? Why the strange water shapes?

2. Just below is picture of another oddly shaped and oddly colored bodies of water. Why are these giant oval things such different colors? Maps link.

3. While we're in the odd-shapes-and-colors mode, what's going on here? Why is the water so... red in some places and green in others? What causes the color changes? (Like the radio tower Challenge from last week, this is something I see nearly every time I fly into San Francisco. Big hint: This body of water is never the same color twice...)

4. There's a story about the lake below that predates its existence. Before the lake was formed by building a dam, what was here? And why would they build a lake on top of it?

5. Same question as before: What WAS here... but now you have to cast your search skills back 10,000 years. What was in this location 10,000 years ago, and why is that interesting? (This is at lat/long 54.83333333, 2.333333333)

As always, the Challenge is really to find the answer AND tell us HOW you did it! Did you know the answer off the top of your head? Or did you have to do a special kind of maps search to figure it out?

Speaking of stories, starting tomorrow I'll be in an off-the-grid kind of place, doing a bit of research for future SRS Challenges. I HOPE to be back on September 27th, but it's possible I'll still be off-the-grid. If so, Don't Panic. I'll be back to an internet connection soon.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

We see strange / odd / interesting things every day... ... but often we don't think to ask "Hey.. what is that thing?" And it's corresponding Challenge: "How can I find out about this??" One of my secret missions with SRS is to help all of us develop a working sense of curiosity... and more than that, to figure out ways to satisfy that curious twinge.This is one such story. As I mentioned last week, I see this very strange antenna every time I fly into San Francisco airport. This antenna is at 37.5469956,-122.2338807. The big question I have every time is what is this thing??Here's an aerial view:

It's a little hard to see in this image, but it's an strange beast of an antenna, with a large plate-like thing at the top of the mast. Here's the side view:

Can you see the hexagonal thing at the very top? (Click on the image to zoom in. Or if you want to, download the image and you can zoom as much as you'd like.) At the fence I also found this, in case it helps:

This is one of those everyday mysteries--things you see all the time without understanding what it is. But that's NOT what SRS is about! When we see mysteries, we try to understand what's happening. So.. .Can you figure out the story here? In particular:

1.What IS the story behind this antenna? (A bit of history, please.)

Searching for the antenna numbers:

[ tower registration 1016438 ]

[ tower registration 1016439 ]

With both of these queries, we quickly learn from the FCC's site "Antenna Structure Registration" (ASR) program exists to keep track of any antenna structure that might be a potential flight hazard. In general, this includes structures that are taller than 200 feet above ground level or that may interfere with the flight path of a nearby airport. SFO's runway is only 7.9 miles (12.7 km) away, and practically on the final approach path.

Using Google Maps "Measure distance" feature, I found that the antenna is pretty much right on the flight path, which is why passengers on the left side of a landing plane will usually see the antenna.

The ASR program lets the FCC require painting and lighting of antenna structures that may pose a hazard to air navigation. If the owner changes the antenna, they have to post an update (and get the FCC to agree to the change).

The second result is the ASR database, which lets us look up these antenna registration numbers. That looks like this:

This database shows the owner as Susquehanna Radio Corp.

By clicking on the Registration Number link, I land on this page, which has lots of information about the tower, including who owns it...

As Regular Reader Jon pointed out, searching for:

[ Susquehanna radio corp antenna San Francisco airport ]

found a really nice posting about this antenna. This site also tells us that this is an AM transmitter, and explains that the hexagonal frame at the top of the antenna is a 'top-hat' is an electrical height extender, which increases the boost for distance signal that couldn't be done because it's too close to the airport. More generally, this kind of antenna is called a "mast radiator" antenna. (With a really nice Wikipedia page on this topic.)

2.Why does it have that funny plate plate at the top?

We know part of the answer to this from our previous searches. But doing a bit of background checking, the search:

[hexagon AM radio transmitting antenna]

leads us to several pages with images. (Where we quickly learn that the top-hat need not be a hexagon! Squares seem to do just fine as well.) The top-hat atop the mast can be see in the Wikipedia Category:Antenna masts with capacitive top hats These "top hats" are sometimes used on the antennas used for AM broadcasting on the MF (medium frequency) and LF (long frequency) bands, to increase the current in the top of the antenna, thereby increasing radiated power, allowing a shorter antenna to be used.

And by the way, if you zoom in enough on Google Maps, you can clearly read the red "HAZ" letters on the ground (required by the FCC, as specified in their ASR bulletins).

you learn that this entity is now defunct, taken over a company called Cumulus. (Interestingly, the ASR form says it's owned by Susquehanna--but the CONTACT information tells us that it's really owned by Cumulus. Good to know their data is up-to-date, although the title isn't quite right.)

"KNBR is an AM radio station licensed to San Francisco, broadcasting on a clear channel at 680 kHz from transmitting facilities near Belmont, California. KNBR's non-directional 50,000-watt class-A signal can be heard throughout much of the western United States and as far west as the Hawaiian Islands at night. For several decades, KNBR enjoyed a long history as the flagship station of NBC's West Coast radio operations."

Finishing up with:

"KNBR carried programs from ESPN Radio and KTCT aired shows from both ESPN Radio and Fox Sports Radio until 2013, when both stations switched to the Cumulus-distributed CBS Sports Radio.

In 2015, KNBR's studios were relocated from 55 Hawthorne Street to 750 Battery Street after parent Cumulus Media consolidated its San Francisco radio stations in one building."

Which is where things stand today. The office is in San Francisco, but the old antennas (top hat and all) still stand and serve, red lights blinking, just about 8 miles from the airport.

Search Lessons

The biggest lesson is this:

1. Be curious about the world--spend a couple of minutes each day scratching that curiosity itch. This blog is all about those tools and methods to search things out. You've got the tools to do it!

2. Searching for the Tower Registration Numbers was a great place to start. It's an obvious place to start, and I'm sure we would have found them by searching for the antennas from th place name, but given the numbers on the signs, that was wonderful. It led us straight to the FCC ASR database, and the rest just fell out easily.

Friday, September 8, 2017

The AGoogleADay.com test-your-search-skills site is back up. (It's been down for a bit over the summer.) Check it out!

This is a great way to practice and improve your online research skills. (And it's especially handy for information literacy and classroom teachers.) Each day supplies 3 Search Challenges in a number of areas, Science, History, Geography, Culture. Some are easy, a few are tough, but they're all solvable... if you know how to do online search! Check it out. (And if you're a teacher, consider working into your daily routine.) Search on!

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Every time I fly into San Francisco airport... ... I see this very strange antenna on the left side of the plane as we fly west to land. (I figured out the lat/long for you so you don't have to extract it: 37.5469956,-122.2338807) I've seen it for years, and yet, I don't have any idea what it is or why it's there. It's all very mysterious. (What ARE those red letters on the ground around it?)

It's hard to see in this aerial image, but it's an odd antenna, with a large plate-like thing at the top of the mast. I was so surprised by this oddity that after my last flight, I drove over and took a closer look after landing. It took a while to get there, as the roads around it aren't very straight, but I managed.

Can you see the hexagonal frame at the very top? (Click on the image to zoom in. Or if you want to, download the image and you can zoom as much as you'd like.) At the fence I also found this, in case it helps:

This is one of those everyday mysteries--things you see all the time without understanding what it is. But that's NOT what SRS is about! When we see mysteries, we try to understand what's happening. So.. .Can you figure out the story here? In particular:

1.What IS the story
behind this antenna? (A bit of history, please.)

2.Why does it have
that funny plate plate at the top?

3.Who uses this
antenna now, and for what purpose?

Next week, we'll talk about what we've found (and most importantly, HOW you can use your SRS skills to answer your own questions like this).

Leave your notes in the comments--and please tell us all HOW you found out! Did you use any special search methods? Did you need to use any special databases?

Thursday, August 31, 2017

If you're lucky, there's just one name for a place. Newly made cities, like Irvine, CA, have always just had one name. But places that have been around for a while, with a rich and complex history--say, Istanbul, Turkey--will almost certainly have multiple names as countries, languages, and history changes the place.

Probably the best-known name-shifting city is the city-currently-known-as Istanbul, which was previously known as Constantinople.

Other places have had interesting name choices as well. What's the story behind these?

1. Where is El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula? What is that city called today? What would that place have been called in 1600?

Searching for the name: [ El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula ] tells you quickly that this is the place also known as Los Angeles, California (aka LA). The Wikipedia page tells the story that Franciscan monk Juan Crespí tells about the Portolá expedition being impressed by a river they named El Río de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula. Meaning, "the River of Our Lady Queen of the Angels of Porciuncula." The name derives from Santa Maria degli Angeli, a small town in Italy housing the Porciuncula, a tiny plot of land that held the church where St. Francis of Assisi lived. Various versions of Crespí's name would be used for the town, including the exceedingly long El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora Reina de los Ángeles sobre el Río Porciúncula, and other variations on that theme. Other variations I've seen in my research:

Of course, Portolá's expedition didn't reach the LA Basin until 1769. What would the locals have called that place before he arrived? As you know, LA is a huge place--so when I think about "that place," what do I mean? The point where the city was founded? The largest nearby settlement of Indians who live nearby? Where the first building was constructed? How about the first Catholic mission? How would you find out? Here's my general query: [ History of Los Angeles ] leads to the Wikipedia article on LA history, which has a section on "pre-history," which tells us that the Tongva people who inhabited the area when the Spanish arrived called the Los Angeles region Yaanga in their language. And what's more, the Spanish pueblo was located near a large village on the river. To complicate things, the DiscoverLosAngeles.com web site claims that around 500AD, Tongva Indians settled in the Los Angeles basin, displacing the previous inhabitants, the . By the 16th century, the region’s main village was called Yang-Na, near present-day Los Angeles City Hall.Let's do some background checking here. What sources are cited for each of the names? Yaanga - the book cited in the Wikipedia article is Munro, Pamela, et al. Yaara' Shiraaw'ax 'Eyooshiraaw'a. Now You're Speaking Our Language: Gabrielino/Tongva/Fernandeño. (Lulu.com, 2008) Except when I search for this book on Lulu.com (a self-publishing site), I find there are two books with different authors. One is by Pamela Munro, and the other is Julia Bogany. This is slightly suspicious--it's a self-publishing site. BUT when I search for these authors by name, I find that Pamela Munro is a linguist at UCLA with extensive work in Native American languages, including Tongva! While Julia Bogany turns out to be a Tongva elder who teaches the language and culture of the Tongva. These aren't just random self-publishers with a passing interest, these are world-experts on the Tongva language. If you're ever going to find two experts in the Tongva language, these are the people you'd find. And when you look at both books, it's clearly the same book--one is just a "large print" edition.I was able to find author Pamela Munro's email address without much trouble--so I wrote to her and asked her opinion about the name. She graciously wrote back (almost instantly!) saying: "The basic form of the name was probably Yaar or Yaay; we don't know. Different endings are added to the root Yaa- (not a word). The -nga ending means "in" and is also used for the form people usually give for village names." How about the other name for the village? Yang-Na is used in the DiscoverLosAngeles article, but has no citation for the source of the name. And if you do a quoted search: [ "yang-na" ] you'll find a lot of Chinese artist results, and a mention in U.S. History (again, without any reference for the name), but a mention that Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo came across the Yang-na village in 1542, noting the location on his map as he continued his exploration.I shifted my search to be: [ "yang-na" Cabrillo ] which then gave me a bunch of results. This name is used just about everywhere. But after extensive searching, I haven't been able to find a decent citation about where the name came from, OR Cabrillo's map with the name "Yang-Na" on it. (I'll keep looking.) So, let's go with what the Tongva experts (and Wikipedia) call it: Yaanga.

2. Where is/was Humqaq? What was that place called in the late 1500s?

The obvious query tells us that this is Point Conception, just west of the southern California city of Santa Barbara. [ Humqaq ] The Wikipedia article says that: "Point Conception was first noted by Spanish maritime explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542 and named Cabo de Galera. In 1602, Sebastian Vizcaíno sailed past again, renaming the protruding headland Punta de la Limpia Concepción ("Point of the Immaculate Conception"). Vizcaíno's name stuck, and was later anglicized to today's version."

And, for extra credit: "It is called Humqaq ("The Raven Comes") in the Chumashan languages..." So the name Humqaq is the Chumash name of the point. After the lesson of Yaanga, it's worth doing a bit of checking. To follow up and find a second source, I used this information in a query: [ Point Conception Cabrillo ] which finds multiple confirming sources. For instance, the book North to California: The Spanish Voyages of Discovery, 1533-1603. (Paul A. Myers, 2004) tells exactly the same story, giving great, high quality references that you can check.

3. Where is the city of Óbuda? And what’s this place called now?

[ Óbuda ] ... tells us that this is / was a city in Hungary that was merged with Buda and Pest in 1873. This area it now forms part of District III-Óbuda-Békásmegyer of Budapest. The name means Old Buda in Hungarian (or, in German, Alt-Ofen). The name in Croatian and Serbian for this city is Stari Budim, but the local Croat minority calls it Obuda (the name "Budim" they use for the fortress in Buda).So, it's Budapest. Again, to check, I did a query for: [ history Budapest ] and found the city's official site, which tells the same story.

4. What was the name of the country where the city of Dar Es Salaam is... before 1964? (That is, if you're looking for historical documents about the city of Dar Es Salaam, what country do you need to look for?)

I started with Dar Es Salaam: [ Dar Es Salaam ] learning that it's in Tanzania. The obvious query here is: [ history of Tanzania ] Finding in Google's web answer that "...On 26 April 1964, Tanganyika united with Zanzibar to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. The country was renamed the United Republic of Tanzania on 29 October of that year. The name Tanzania is a blend of Tanganyika and Zanzibar and previously had no significance." I have to admit that I grew up with Tanganyika as a country in Africa, and was vaguely aware that it had ceased-to-be sometime in the mid-1960s, but I didn't know that the new country name is a portmanteau word combining Zanzibar and Tanganyika! So, if you're searching for information about the region around Dar Es Salaam, you'd want to know about this name change.

5. What was the name of the capital of Zaire in 1900?

Again, here's another African country name that I was aware had changed, but I didn't really know the transformation process. The obvious search: [ capital of Zaire ]

gives you this result on Google:

Be careful!! If you just copied this answer, you'd be missing an important fact. Zaire is no longer a country. If you now do a search for: [ Zaire ] you'll quickly find out that was the name for the Democratic Republic of the Congo that existed only for 6 years, between 1971 and 1997. This is an important point: Check your work! Kinshasha IS the capital of the DR of Congo, and was the capital of Zaire. But remember the Challenge question? "What was the capital of Zaire in 1900?" This is a bit of a trick question, but it's the kind of question that you see all the time. It's the kind of question that comes up in real research--search questions don't necessarily have to make sense or be internally coherent. That's the way this question is: Zaire didn't exist before 1971. So asking "what's the capital in 1900?" is an inherently odd question. So... what's a reasonable interpretation? I'd say the question is really like this: What WAS that part of Central Africa called in 1900? Reading about the history of Zaire tells us that it was formed out of the Republic of the Congo in 1960. Before 1960, this country was called the Belgian Congo, which was established by Belgium through annexation in 1908. Okay, what was it before 1908? Reading carefully, you'll find that the a group of European nations (the Berlin Conference), divided up the area of the Congo, ceding it to Belgium. As a result, King Leopold II of Belgium received a large share of territory (2,344,000 km2 (905,000 sq mi)) to be organized as the Congo Free State. Congo Free State operated as a corporate state privately controlled by Leopold II through a non-governmental organization, the Association Internationale Africaine. The state included the entire area of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo (and therefore, Zaire) and existed from 1885 to 1908, when the government of Belgium annexed the area.So what was the capital of the Congo Free State? [ capital Congo Free State ]was... Boma. We find that "Boma was the capital city of the Congo Free State and Belgian Congo (the modern Democratic Republic of the Congo) from 1886 to 1926, when the capital was moved to Léopoldville (since renamed Kinshasa). To double check: [ history of Boma Congo ] leads to several books (e.g., Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo) that give us background information that agrees with this. I would say that Boma, in 1900, was the capital of the region of the Congo that was known as Zaire, and is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Interestingly, as I was doing this research, I tried other search engines as well. (You should too, from time to time, just to be sure you know what all is possible.) I tried Bing, and got this as a result:

Bing correctly points out that NOW there is no country known as Zaire. But when there was, and its capital was Kinshasa.

On the other hand, if you give an expanded version of this query to Bing:

[ what city was the capital of Zaire in 1900 ]

Bings gives the following web answer, which is close, but not quite right... It tries, and misses. (Note that it's just giving us a summary of the Answers.com commentary on "What was the capital of Zaire?" but ignoring the date!)

On the other-other hand, Wolfram Alpha gets it definitively wrong (the Democratic Republic of Congo didn't exist in 1900):

While Google doesn't even try (which is probably really the right thing to do):

6. You probably did a number of searches to answer these Challenges. Is there a single reference work (hopefully online!) that would let you answer all of these questions? What would should a work be called?

Great work by Jon (the Unknown) who pointed out that a historical gazetteer is a reference work that contains information about place names, events, and changes over time.

Note the highlighted passages. This reference book uses the "Yang-na" form of the Tongva village name, and gives one of the variations on the long Spanish name of LA.

Another useful reference to know about is the "Dictionary of place-names" that several reference publishers issue. It's often useful to search for such a dictionary for a given place. Here are a couple of examples that I've used:

[ dictionary place-names ]

[ dictionary place-name British ]

[ dictionary place-names California ]

These will find resources that can answer all kinds of geographic place name changes over time!

Search Lessons

1. Check your web answers! As you can see, various sources give variations on a theme. As I always say--double source (or more!) your answers. Get your information from places you can trust.

2. Remember that you can always ask a real expert. In this case, Pamela Munro was a fantastic resource--she's a world expert on this topic, but was gracious in giving me an answer to a fairly technical question. People are generous, as a rule. Reach out to them.

3. Be sure you understand the question. In the Zaire capital question, the answer took some digging to get to the bottom of the issue. It really was NOT obvious what the answer was, and took some thinking about what a possible answer would be. Don't give up digging!

4. Sometimes questions take a while to answer. I'm still looking for the Cabrillo map with "Yang-na" on it. (Or something similar.) It may take a while, but you never know...

5. Know what a gazetteer and a dictionary of place-names can do for you.

Well... this was fun! And it took more time than I'd anticipated. (I spent WAAY too much time trying to find the origins of "Yang-na.")

But we'll be back next Wednesday with a new (and much simpler) Challenge.